Thursday, March 4, 2010

V Was for Victory.... (12)

Politics and American Culture During WWII (12). John Morton Blum. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1976.

Why read it? Perspective from the Home Front in World War II. The effects of American propaganda on the American people. A completely different view of a war from our more recent wars, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Ideas:

“…those who interpreted all government planning as socialism or worse.” p. 222.

“The familiar Republican charges, Dewey’s charges, that the administration relied on one-man government, that it was old and tired, had a new impact in 1944, for the President looked and often acted just that way.” p. 295.

“Victory had come at last, victory over Germany, victory over Japan, and victory, too, achieved much earlier, over the Great Depression.” p. 301.

“…lacking both eloquence and elegance, Truman simply did not fit the picture of a president that Roosevelt had engraved so deeply on the consciousness of Americans.” p. 303.

“American forces had returned about 12,807,000 veterans of WWII to civil life.” p. 333.